Sunday, June 6, 2010

Well it absolutely poured all night, and we would not have been surprised if the campers had decided to riot and take over the hotel for some relief from the rain.  It must have been miserable in those tents, even the locals the next day said it NEVER rains that hard.  We also half expected to get a phone call from the dive shop, cancelling today’s snorkel/dive trip, but it went out at scheduled, even though it was cold, cloudy and windy when we left.  However, after a while the sun came out and it turned out to be a gorgeous day out on the water. The first stop was for snorkeling, which we did for about an hour, and we saw tons of beautiful coral and lots of fish. Then we went further out to find the manta rays. This is a very well choreographed and rehearsed effort, involving the use of a small airplane to spot the rays.  Once they’re spotted, one of the crew goes in the water and swims out to them, then half the people on the boat go into the water and swim along with the rays for a few minutes, then the other half go in. We switched back and forth like this 3 times, so we got several chances to see them, and they are enormous. The ones we saw were 6 to 8 feet across, and they swam fairly fast so it was hard to keep up with them. The visibility wasn’t great but here’s one of our pics.

After that was lunch, then another snorkel/dive, and then we headed back.  Here are some more underwater pics.  (It's best to double click the pics)